Homomorphic Converters

Homomorphic Converters

by Tom La Farge

Homomorphic Converters, the second pamphlet in the series 13 Writhing Machines, continues Tom La Farge’s exploration of the techniques of constrained composition, begun in Administrative Assemblages (recently reissued in a perfectbound paperback edition). Homomorphism is new wine in old bottles, and Homomorphic Converters teaches you how to use a pre-existing form of words or of images, found or invented, to express matter radically different from what that form originally expressed.

Several procedures for homomorphic compositionare examined, including “Homovocalism” (re-using the vowels of one sentence in writing a new one), and the “Chimera” (keeping the sentence structure of one text while replacing the words with vocabulary from one, two, or three others). “Homoikonism,” the conflation of visual forms with imagery not usually associated with those forms (a bowl of vegetables turns out to be the face of a man, when you turn it upside down), discusses the visual applications and is illustrated throughout the pamphlet by several homomorphic alphabets.